


somewhere only we know

by thecivilunrest



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 11:04:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecivilunrest/pseuds/thecivilunrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Krista finds Ymir just when she’s on the precipice of giving up. (She would never give up, of course, it’s just that hope is hard.) </p><p>Time Traveler's Wife AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	somewhere only we know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monkkeyslut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkkeyslut/gifts).



> Happy late Christmas Morgan! Love you dear. <3
> 
> Also it's been years since I read or watched The Time Traveler's Wife, so I really don't remember anything but the basic premises and that probably shows. Slightly spoilery warnings at the bottom.

**age 10**

 

When Krista needs to hide, which seems to be more and more often, she retreats to the woods. It’s cool there, and damp, and best of all it is silent. There’s only the birds and the bugs and Krista. Only the creek gurgles with water; here no one is shouting at her, or shouting at each other, or wishing that she’d just die.

 

Another reason that the woods are her safe haven is that her mother would never be caught dead in the woods. Too messy, it’d ruin her fine clothes.

 

Krista’s cheek is still stinging from her mother’s slap when she’s playing in the cool creek water. It had rained the day before, and so the creek was running faster than usual. Watching the way the leaves rush by, like tiny boats racing, soothes her and the wind cooled her cheek.

 

She is so engrossed in imagining a tiny little world with leaf boat races that she hardly notices when there’s a splash. It’s only when she looks up that she sees a naked woman in her creek.

 

The woman—who is long limbed and brown and _naked_ —looks at Krista and says, “Oh shit.”

 

 

The woman’s name is Ymir and she is from the future.

 

“Wow,” Krista breathes. She is in awe. This is a much better story than one that she could ever make up in a million, _billion_ years. “The _future_.”

 

“Yeah,” Ymir agrees, scratching the back of her neck with one hand. “So do you think you could get me any sort of clothes at all before we finish this game of twenty questions?”

 

Krista flinches at the thought of going back into the house. There is no way that her mother has cooled down enough to be able to look at Krista without hitting her again.

 

Without thinking, she raises a hand to the cheek that her mother had slapped. Ymir’s eyes flash with understanding, and then something that looks like anger. “Oh, it’s like that, huh?” Ymir asks. Krista doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, biting on her lower lip.

 

“Well I guess I don’t really need clothes. As long as you can’t see anything.” Ymir moves so that she is sitting with her legs to her chest, and then wraps her arms around them. 

 

“Sorry,” Krista apologizes, but Ymir shrugs like it can’t be helped. 

 

“Are you _really_ from the future?” Krista asks again. She wants to believe this lady, she really, _really_ does. Ymir appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of the creek. All of the stories that Krista has read would label that as suspicious.

 

“Tomorrow your mom is going to back her shiny red Cadillac into the tree on the edge of your driveway.” Krista thinks she Ymir mumble, “And it serves her fucking right” but she isn’t sure. “If that happens, you’ll know I’m really from the future. And if it doesn’t then I’m a big fat liar, okay?”

 

“Okay!” Krista agrees easily.

 

“Is there anything else that you want to know about the future?”

 

The truth is, Krista can’t think of anything that she really wants to know about the future. To her, time can hardly extend beyond her and Ymir in the middle of the woods together. She just wants to know more about Ymir, and more about her “power” and more about why she feels almost drawn to a naked woman that she found in the creek. 

 

“Are there flying cars?”

 

Ymir snorts. “No. This isn’t The Jetsons.”

 

“What about robots that clean up your room for you? And do your homework?”

 

“No.” 

 

“Jetpacks?”

 

“I think they’re working on getting those out to the general public, so yes. But no one really has them unless they’re a millionaire. So not really.”

 

“Hmm, okay.” Krista stops to think about something else that she might want to know. She is running out of questions. “Did California fall off America yet?”

 

“What are they teaching you kids in school? No. Definitely not.”

 

“Do you know me, in the future?” 

 

This is the first question that makes Ymir pause. “Yes,” she answers slowly.

 

“Really? How?”

 

Krista can feel her heart thrumming in excitement.

 

“I can’t tell you that,” Ymir tells her. “You’ll have to decide that on your own.”

 

 

Krista decides not to go home until Ymir goes back to wherever she came from. The woods are getting darker by increments, and the critters are chattering more loudly the later that it gets. 

 

The time passes with questions. Krista starts to think of more things to ask, her questions and theories about the future growing even more ridiculous when she puts her imagination into it.

 

And yet Ymir answers them all patiently, even if most of her answers consist of “no” and “where the hell did that come from?”

 

“You’re coming back, right?” Krista asks when the sky is black. She can see the stars between the gaps in the branches.

 

“Yes,” Ymir tells her, and Krista jumps up in excitement.

 

“Do you know when?” She hopes it is tomorrow, or the next day, or even the day after that. Krista thinks she could wait a long time for Ymir to come back, if only she would come back.

 

“I’ll be back in the woods in two months from today, so mark it on your calendar, okay? I’ll appear in your room next year on February 20th. And then July 7th and November 2nd and December 15th two years from now I’ll be out here in the woods.” Ymir lists out the dates easily, like something that she has read and memorized a thousand times. “Every time after that I’ll appear in your room. Bring food and a blanket next time you come out here. Real clothes if you can spare them. I’ll have a better list for you next time, so you’ll know every time I come and where I’ll be.”

 

“Okay.” Krista smiles at her. “I’m glad you’re coming back.”

 

“Yeah, me too.” Ymir smiles back and it makes her whole face light up. 

 

Krista is about to ask her even more questions, specifically more questions about the two of them, but before she can the smile slides from Ymir’s face. “I’m going to leave now, okay?”

 

Ymir looks like she’s going to be sick. Krista isn’t even halfway to where Ymir was sitting before she starts fading, becoming fainter and fainter until she’s gone. Krista looks at the place where Ymir was sitting and for some reason feels the strangest urge to cry.

 

 

The next day her mother has far too many gin and tonics and ends up backing her Cadillac into the lone tree at the end of the drive. Krista watches her mother curse at the car and the tree and the sky and knows that Ymir was not lying.

 

She never really thought she was.

 

 

**age 12**

 

Krista has made a list of all of the dates that Ymir has told her so far. She keeps the list in the drawer in her bedside table, and she asks for a calendar every year for Christmas. All of the Ymir dates are circled in red.

 

As soon as Krista gets home from school she finds a wool blanket that her grandmother knit, a can of soup that she heats up and puts into a plastic container, and steals her mother’s new winter coat from her closet. It’s cold and Krista knows for a fact that it’s warm—she heard her mother bragging on the phone about the brand and the quality.

 

It’s twenty degrees in Minnesota, and snow and ice crunch under Krista’s feet as she walks across their property. She hopes that if Ymir is there that she hasn’t been there long. 

 

She isn’t there and so Krista sits and waits, picking up the book that they’re studying in class to read it again. She’s gotten halfway through when Ymir finally appears, cursing to find herself naked and landing on ice.

 

Krista hands her the blanket and coat. She feels funny looking at Ymir naked, but she find that she can’t look away. There’s an undercurrent of guilt here, though, like Krista’s doing something wrong. She doesn’t like to think about it. “This looks fancy,” Ymir says when she examines the coat. Her eyes widen when she reads the label. “Burberry, one hundred percent cashmere,” Ymir reads aloud. “Fucking figures. Your mom’s right?” When Krista nods she snorts.

 

“It’s cold,” Krista explains. Ymir shrugs.

 

“So do you have anything new to read to me today?” Ymir asks around a mouthful of soup. She looks like she could drink it by the gallon, and Krista wishes that she had brought more.

 

“Only a little,” Krista says, bringing out her notebook. Ymir is the only person that knows that she writes, and the only person that Krista would ever tell. She can just imagine her mother rolling her eyes at the fact that she likes to lose herself in stories, and that she likes to create her own as well. But Ymir would never break the Krista’s fragile dreams like that, and so she reads to her. 

 

“The sky is the same purple as a bruise, and there is no one in sight for miles,” Krista reads. “I can’t remember where I am. The only thing that is familiar to me is the body next to mine. It’s my sister. She’s dead.”

 

She only just started this story yesterday. There’s another story in her notebook that Ymir could hear, one that’s completely finished, but she’s loath to share it. It had been based on a dream that she’d had about Ymir, and admitting that would make Krista blush and not be able to look at her ever again.

 

In that story the heroine—who was also tall and brown skinned with freckles—had married the blonde princess in the end. It had been a fairy tale.

 

“That’s dark,” Ymir says when she’s finished reading what she has so far. “I like it.”

 

Krista feels heat rush to her cheeks. “Thanks,” she says, turning her face away so Ymir can’t see.

 

One day she hopes to be able to read Ymir their fairy tale.

 

 

**age 14**

 

It’s not that Krista forgot that today is a Ymir day, it’s just that she had run out of excuses to tell Bobby no. She will be fine in Krista’s room alone, she tells herself. There is plenty to do and her mom won’t check on her since she’s going on a date. Everything will be fine.

 

“Everything will be fine,” she whispers to herself out loud, a reminder. 

 

“What will be fine?” Ymir’s voice calls from behind her. She’s buttoning the shirt of Krista’s mother’s that Krista had laid out for her. Like everything of her mother’s it’s too small on Ymir, and too tight in the chest. Krista has to look away.

 

“My date,” Krista chirps, forcing her face into a smile.

 

“Your…date?” The word ‘date’ dangles at the end of Ymir’s sentence, and her face is frozen in an expression that Krista can’t read.

 

She continues to smile. “Yeah. Mom’s real excited about it. She even got me this dress, see?” Krista twirls for her, showing off the floral pattern. It’s a bit much for just a movie date, but her mom had been so excited when she had finally shown interest in “normal things” that she hadn’t been able to say no.

 

“It’s nice. You look…nice.” There’s something weird about Ymir’s voice, but the compliment is sincere. Krista lights up a little at that.

 

“Thanks. I was just about to do my make-up but I don’t really know what to do.” She fingers the tubes that her mother had thrust at her without explanation, as if she should have been born doing this.

 

“Well, I don’t really know anything about make-up crap, but I know…” Ymir trails off. “You like to put on eyeliner, and you look nice with pink lipstick. Here let me see if you have it here, you always said that your mom’s the one that introduced you to your favorite color. You bought ten of them when Revlon announced that they were discontinuing it.” She uncaps every lipstick tube until she finally finds the right one. “Here. It’s this one, I think.”

 

Krista applies the color to her lips herself. Ymir is behind her, watching her in the mirror with an unreadable expression on her face.

 

Krista can feel her own heart break as she smiles like she’s delighted about the new color on her mouth, and receives Ymir’s own faded smile in response.

 

 

 **age 16**

 

Krista has never noticed the lack of first aid at her house until she desperately needs it. After digging through every single drawer in the kitchen and the three bathrooms she has found approximately one band-aid and some antiseptic.

 

The antiseptic burns as she pulls it on the gash. The gash looks terrible, the edges ragged and the blood dark. Worse than it is really, in the mirror. She hisses in pain, biting her lip to keep from crying out.

 

“What happened?” Ymir asks, appearing out of nowhere. She is dressed, obviously having been there for a while, but Krista had barely noticed her. For the first time Krista forgot that today was a Ymir day.

 

She can feel tears come to her eyes as she acknowledges that, as she realizes that she really and truly forgot that Ymir was coming. And she wants to cry at the memory of what happened to her, but she can’t, not in front of Ymir, not in front of anyone.

 

“Who did this to you?” Ymir asks, her voice lower than it was before. She sounds deadly, and Krista just wants Ymir to hold her. To tell her that everything will be all right. To lie. “Krista, what happened? Tell me.”

 

“Well,” Krista begins, and then bites her lip. She hates how her voice is quavering. “I, um. I came out. As gay.” Her voice breaks on the word, unsure why it is so hard to tell Ymir the truth when earlier that day telling the entire school had seemed so easy. “And well. A few of the guys, especially Bobby, you know the one I dated a couple of years ago? Well he, um. He and his friends didn’t take it well.”

 

Ymir’s gaze looks murderous as she touches the bruise on Krista’s face. Her hand is could and her touch soft, but firm. Krista wants to cry in earnest now. “Nothing really happened, but they sort of roughed me up when I fought them. I got this,” she says, motioning to the gash on her shoulder, “when I was running from them. I tripped.”

 

Ymir says nothing as she bandages Krista’s shoulder, and when she’s done she leans in and kisses the band-aid, like a mother. Only the kiss doesn’t feel very motherly, and Krista’s breath catches when Ymir pulls away.

 

“Where do these assholes live?” she asks, and Krista tells her without thinking.

 

 

“Stay in the car,” Ymir tells Krista after she turns into Bobby’s driveway. Krista does as she’s told and watches as Ymir walks to his front door. The automatic lights turn on as Ymir steps closer, bathing the entire driveway in yellow light.

 

When Bobby comes out—Krista knows that it’s Bobby from the way his stupid snapback is situated on his head—and Ymir pulls him out of the light and into the dark.

 

Krista can hear flesh on flesh even though she can’t see anything, and so must Bobby’s friends because they eventually come out too, and then there’s nothing but silence.

 

Ymir steps into the car and doesn’t say anything as Krista starts to drive away. It isn’t until Krista comes into the driveway, all of the lights turned off with her mother gone, does Ymir finally speak. “They’ll leave alone now, I swear it.”

 

Krista finds that she doesn’t have any words, so she nods, and walks back to her room, Ymir close behind her. It is only when they’re both sitting on Krista’s bed does she see Ymir’s knuckles bloody and swollen.

 

Without thinking Krista threads her fingers through Ymir’s and kisses her knuckles, the way that Ymir had kissed her shoulder only hours earlier. Ymir takes a deep breath through her nose at the contact.

 

“Krista…” she starts, but Krista doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want Ymir to push her away.

 

“Please,” she pleads. “Please. Love me.”

 

Ymir seems like she is going to hesitate, but she grips Krista’s fingers harder as she leans in and presses a soft kiss against Ymir’s lips. When Ymir kisses her back, Krista sighs into her mouth.

 

She counts this as a victory.

 

 

**age 18**

 

Krista is trying to find her shoes for graduation, looking through her closet, when suddenly Ymir appears. Krista jumps when she hears her come, and turns to look. This is the first time that she’s seen her since they had sex, and suddenly the memory comes back, making Krista’s lips tingle.

 

“Ymir!” she cries, running and wrapping her arms around Ymir’s waist, her shoes and graduation completely forgotten in lieu of Ymir’s sudden reappearance.

 

“Krista, I’m naked,” Ymir laughs at her delight, hugging her back.

 

“I know,” Krista says, smiling wider now.

 

“I’m not going to be here that long,” Ymir says, sitting down on the bed and pulling Krista with her by the hand. “You’re going to meet me soon. In your time not on mine.”

 

“Really?” Krista breathes, unable to believe it. She’s wanted to meet Ymir—in real time—for so long that it’s seemed to become a part of her personality, that yearning.

 

“Yeah. But I won’t know who you are. I’m not who I am right now. When you meet me I’m going to be hard, but I’ll shatter. So be careful of that, okay?”

 

Krista nods slowly and Ymir squeezes her hands. “Find me,” she says, and then she’s gone.

 

 

**age 19**

 

Krista finds Ymir just when she’s on the precipice of giving up. (She would never give up, of course, it’s just that hope is hard.)

 

Manhattan is crowded with people and Krista looks through people’s faces without thinking now, always searching for Ymir. There were a few times where she was close but they were too short, or they didn’t have freckles, or they just weren’t who she was looking for.

 

She almost dismisses this girl too, when she takes a second look.

 

It’s Ymir, there’s no doubt about it. She’s wearing a black t-shirt, talking to another girl, and she’s smoking, cigarette between her fingers.

 

Krista hadn’t realized that Ymir smoked. It dawns on her that perhaps she doesn’t know Ymir—or at least she doesn’t know _this_ Ymir—and her heart clogs her throat. This Ymir doesn’t look friendly, and she certainly doesn’t look like she would answer a child’s questions for hours on end.

 

 _I’m going to be hard,_ she hears Ymir’s voice in her mind. _But I’ll shatter._

 

Krista takes a deep breath and walks until she’s right in front of this Ymir. _Find me,_ she hears Ymir say.

 

_Found you._

 

“Excuse me,” she begins, unsure of where to start. Ymir stops talking to the girl and looks at her with a blank expression. “Would you like to go get coffee?” Krista’s voice squeaks and there’s a part of her that wants to keep walking, wants to go to class and forget that this ever happened. The way Ymir is looking at her certainly isn’t squashing that urge.

 

“It’s just, that I think I know you from somewhere. And I’ll buy! I know there’s a Starbucks a couple of blocks from here, and-”

 

The girl Ymir was talking to says, “I’m leaving,” and walks away with a huff. Ymir watches her go before turning back to Krista.

 

“You’re buying?” Ymir clarifies, and Krista shakes her head.

 

“Yes. Yes of course!”

 

Ymir studies her, taking in her jacket and jeans before saying, “Let’s go then.” She shoves her hands in her pockets and starts on the way to Starbucks. Krista can hardly believe that she said yes before following her.

 

 

**epilogue**

 

Ymir isn’t afraid of a lot of things. She was never afraid of the dark, and isn’t afraid of dark alleys. It’s part of growing up in the wrong place in the Bronx; she learned how to fight a long, long time ago.

 

The things that Ymir are afraid of consist of Krista, and the fact that Krista loves her, and the fact that Ymir has no idea how she’s supposed to tell Krista about her mutation.

 

Krista will stop loving her, she knows that. She’ll call Ymir a freak and be afraid of her, and then there will be no more coffee runs whenever Krista has a test to study for, no more quiet sex in Krista’s dorm room or when Ymir’s roommate stays in on the weekend, or loud sex when no one is around. And certainly no more of Krista’s head on Ymir’s chest as she sleeps.

 

Ymir had resisted for so long, had tried so hard not to love Krista, but Krista made it easy every time that she smiled. Ymir would hate her for that, if she didn’t love her so much.

 

As though Krista can tell what she’s thinking, even when she’s sleeping, Krista stirs. She smiles when she realizes that Ymir is awake as well. “Good morning,” she says brightly. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

 

“You,” Ymir says, kissing her forehead, wishing this will last forever. This, of course, is when she can feel herself start to fade. She curses her luck as Krista sits up, eyes wide with surprise. Naturally, nothing gold can stay.

 

 

Ymir lands in a creek full of rushing water, which is one of the better places that she’s landed. At least she’s not in some alley somewhere, where she will be beaten for being indecent or taken in by nuns and forced into a dress. That’s happened before, too many times to count.

 

She’s about to be thankful for at least _one_ thing when she notices a little girl on the edge of the creek, her eyes round in her face. “Oh shit,” Ymir says, when she realizes who the little girl is.

 

 

“Who are _you_?” Krista asks.

 

 _This is it,_ Ymir thinks. “I’m Ymir.”

 

 

When Ymir finally fades back to present day Manhattan she finds Krista waiting for her.

 

“You knew,” Ymir says. She thinks she should be angry and full of accusations, but mostly she is just tired. She had been stuck with baby Krista at that creek for hours, answering questions that she barely knew the answers to. “You knew this entire time.”

 

“I did.”

 

“And you knew that I’d memorize that list of dates that you tacked up to your wall without meaning to.” Ymir had seen that list a thousand times, read it absentmindedly when Krista was otherwise occupied, but had never thought much of it before now.

 

“Yes.” She smiles.

 

“You know this means that I’m going to have to leave you sometimes,” Ymir says, wishing that she wasn’t cursed, that they could be having a normal conversation about their life together.

 

“I’m not going to leave you,” Krista swears. “Don’t be afraid anymore, okay? I’ll always wait for you.”

 

“I wasn’t afraid,” Ymir grumbles, but then Krista is kissing her and everything else melts away. It’s nice, knowing that someone is waiting her for her. No one’s ever done that before. No one’s ever been able to.

 

Ymir hopes that she doesn’t ever keep Krista waiting long.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings include child abuse, harassment, and homophobia. There is also sexual content between an adult and a minor, but since Krista is 16 I didn't put a warning. However Ymir is in her late twenties when this happens. Nothing is exactly explicit, but it is all implied.


End file.
